The Summer We Came to Life

CHAPTER

5

SO, TWO DAYS LATER, MONDAY EVENING, AFTER I’d done all the shopping and arranged the rental cars, and talked to my sole Honduran friend, Ana Maria, about renting her uncle’s beach house, the vacation club, freshly reorganized, was packing bags in Virginia. Minus Isabel. She was already en route.

Jesse Brighton, Isabel’s mother, picked up the gift—a deck of cards with a little red bow—from her nightstand. A glitter of a tear appeared at the corner of her eye. Jesse wiped it with the back of her hand, not worried about smearing her black eyeliner. It was tattooed on—a service Jesse offered at her beauty salons. She set the cards back down and clasped her hands together, her scarlet acrylic nails pressing into her tan skin. After all this time, she might actually be falling for someone. The Cranky Professor, no less, Jesse thought and chuckled at the frowning visage of her neighbor and bridge partner, Arshan Bahrami. Jesse put a hand to her throat and felt her fluttery pulse. It wasn’t the world’s most romantic gift—the new cards commemorated their winning streak in bridge. But he’d said yes to coming on the trip, just as soon as she’d asked him.

Jesse clapped her hands together and shook her butt in her leopard pajamas. She looked back to the bed, where her red suitcase perched like a treasure chest longing for booty. Jesse pumped up the stereo and Michael sang his heart out about Billie Jean. She reset herself to “packing,” by which Jesse meant dancing around the bed, picking up an item—lace panties, a beach cover-up, a container of Texas RedEye Bloody Mary Mix—and tossing it into the suitcase. She paused and looked around the room for anything else she might be forgetting.

An itemization of Jesse Brighton’s bedroom would produce a most befuddling mix of clues about a woman’s life. A picture of her daughter, Isabel, hung next to the Don’t Mess with Texas sign and an original Dali, next to a framed poster of an eighteen-year-old Jesse on a 1975 cover of Vogue. Jesse leaped up and kissed the photo of Isabel and then of herself, before plopping down on the bed. She pulled a gold lamé stiletto out from under her as she dialed Lynette’s number. Lynette could decide which swimsuits Jesse should bring now that you know who was coming. Jesse sighed. How to hide the ravages of time?

Jesse was about to hang up when Lynette picked up on the fourth ring.

“The Chanel one-piece or the Christian Dior bikini? Which one do you think makes my ass look less like a wrinkled elephant?”

“Jesse, I can’t talk. I’ll call you in a bit.”

“Why? Ooohhh—”

“I’m hanging up.”

Jesse looked at the clock. “Nookie Night! Are you doing that thing? From Cosmo? That lucky dog—”

A man’s voice from the background bellowed, “She’ll call you later, Jesse!”

“’Bye, Jess,” Lynette said, and laughed her throaty Kathleen Turner laugh.

Lynette Jones set down the phone and looked at herself in the mirror. She smoothed down the nurse’s costume that had arrived in the mail in an unmarked brown envelope. Who would’ve thought a size large would ever be too small on Lynette Jones? That’s why you married a black man, honey, her husband always said when she cursed the scale. We appreciate extra curves. Lynette wouldn’t be sorry to have a few less curves to haul around, but make no mistake, Kendra’s mother would always be beautiful. Lynette smoothed her shaggy blond bob and made her mirror face—that puckered Pamela Anderson look all women make at themselves in the mirror. Then she spun around to face her husband.

“Are you ready for your exam, Mr. Jones?”

Cornell was lying on the bed in his boxer shorts and favorite argyle socks. He was tied to the bed frame with some of Lynette’s pantyhose. It was number three on Cosmo’s most recent “Spice up Your Sex Life” list. She bought it at the grocery store when they had the Saturday special on scallops. Of course, Cosmo mentioned black lace thigh-highs, not the control-top hose Lynette used to hide her varicose veins. And the socks were a modification, as well. But Cornell had insisted: “You know my feet get cold, baby. Bad circulation.”

Cornell answered, in an overdone baritone, “Yes, Nurse Jones,” making his big belly jiggle like chocolate pudding in an earthquake. Lynette pursed her lips to stifle a giggle, and sauntered over to her husband as best a lady could manage in white patent leather.

Lynette stepped around the suitcases and perched herself on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t exactly sure what to do next. She decided to use the stethoscope and creaked onto all fours atop Cornell. As she bent over, a boob flopped out of the costume. Lynette harrumphed as if gravely offended. Once upon a time, she’d had great boobs. She stuffed the breast gruffly back into the dress before she remembered Cosmo’s number three. Cornell confined himself to a small chuckle. She straightened up to avoid another costume malfunction.

“Ow!” Lynette yelped.

“What, honey? Your back?” Cornell moved to comfort his wife and remembered the panty hose. At the same instant, he realized his hands and feet had fallen asleep. Lordy, that was it. Cornell’s laughter filled every inch of the bedroom.

Lynette took one look at her husband tied up and shaking with laughter and added her own husky laugh. Once they started, they couldn’t stop. She pointed and laughed. He couldn’t wipe the tears from his eyes, and his frantic blinking made her roll over and clutch her side. Something like this always happened. Lynette and Cornell spent a lot of time deepening their laugh lines together.

“My feet are aslee—” Cornell struggled to say in between snorting fits of hiccupping.

“Bad circulation!” Lynette guffawed.

She crawled over to undo Cornell’s hands and feet. After Lynette finally managed to untie him, Cornell wrapped his wife up in his arms and hugged her tight.

Lynette skinny-dipped in her husband’s embrace. “Well, I hope you can see how much I love you.” She snuggled into his arms and planted a soft, wet kiss on Cornell’s chest. “Can I make love to you now, Mr. Jones?”

“Proceed, m’dear. Proceed.”

The widowed professor looked up at the silver lamp he’d carried from Tehran so his wife would have light from the home she’d never wanted to leave. His fingers moved to their position above the piano keys, but stopped to hover like an ominous cloud. With a frown, he smoothed his cardigan and trousers. Arshan believed pajamas were only appropriate in the bedroom, even now, years since Maliheh or children filled the house. Arshan felt how thin his legs were. He’d always been trim, but after sixty, trim starts to look gaunt, he thought. He pushed his glasses back into place over the pronounced crook of his nose. Arshan Bahrami, no matter where he was, ever looked the part of the respectable professor.

Arshan’s eyes lingered on two identically framed photographs illuminated by the lamp. One showed a woman hugging a laughing teenage boy. The woman’s expressive eyes, as big and dark as Brazil nuts, included the photographer in the joke. The other photo was of a teenage girl with teasing eyes not unlike the adjacent woman’s.

Arshan began to play Beethoven’s Ninth, his eyes still fixed on the photographs. Ghosts had been Arshan’s only audi ence for many years. Besides bridge nights at Lynette and Cornell’s, Arshan’s entire outward life consisted of astrophysics—teaching and research trips to distant telescopes. Arshan slammed his fingers discordantly on the keys. He’d heard a girlish chuckle above the music. Why had he chosen that song? His daughter’s favorite. He pried his eyes away from the photos.

Arshan took a breath a yogi would envy and forced himself to go upstairs. Ten minutes later, the piano watched him sneak back into the room. He plucked up the photograph of the young girl and transported it across the room to a zippered suitcase. He tucked the gold frame between two halves of perfectly folded clothing. Then, his eyes resolutely averted from the remaining picture, Arshan turned off the lamp.

Isabel was at the airport, the only one taking a red-eye flight through Miami. She was certifiably in a state of shock.

She hadn’t told anyone yet, but she’d been fired. Laid off was more accurate, but it stung like “fired.” She’d gone in to work instead of preparing for her trip—a testament to her job dedication—and they let her go, saying the vacation only sped up the process, budget concerns meant they’d have had to do it sooner or later, as much as they hated to see her go. She’d packed her career life into a cardboard box, come home and deposited it on the side of the couch opposite her packed suitcases. Isabel sat down between her old life and her carry-on, her cat making the only sound in the room. But Isabel wasn’t experiencing silence—she was awash in a deafening waterfall of thought. It was only after her Pavlovian response to the horn of the cab and the blur of arriving at the airport that she felt the desperate need to tell someone.

She almost called me, but was understandably wary after our last conversation. Isabel tapped her perfectly manicured fingers—from her latest biweekly appointment at her mother’s salon—on her BlackBerry. She knew she should call Jesse, but her mother was liable to dispense some cloying phrase like “Lemons have a way of becoming martini decorations, sweetie.”

She would’ve called Kendra straight away, but it was after midnight. No way Kendra would be awake. She’d be all packed and organized, asleep in her white silk nightgown, next to her perfect boyfriend, Michael, in their meticulous SoHo apartment.

Screw it. Kendra it would have to be. She couldn’t imagine boarding a sleeping plane with a head full of “what the hell do I do now?” She dialed Kendra’s number and listened to it ring through to voicemail. When she hung up, deflated, she couldn’t repress a curse word or two, prompting a shh from a nearby mother cradling a little girl in her lap. She dialed again. Then again. What was the deal with her friends lately? When did they become so self-absorbed? Mina would’ve answered on a floating ice cap in Antarctica.

Kendra pressed “ignore” on her phone, for the third time, without taking her eyes off Michael. He was still pacing like an agitated tiger. He was having the exact same effect as that of an angry tiger on Kendra Jones.

Kendra was sitting very still and straight on her lavender loveseat. Work papers—million-dollar orders for dresses in five shades and sizes—had fallen to the floor, and were shocked that Kendra hadn’t noticed. If the papers weren’t really shocked by the negligence, they were certainly appalled by the mess. As Michael paced and ranted and lectured, he navigated a very uncharacteristic rug of chaos—slippers, discarded work clothes, a full coffee cup, and a half-empty bottle of vodka. His. Not hers.

Kendra put a nervous hand to her hair. While waiting for Michael to arrive, she’d started to scratch between the tightly plaited rows of braids. Impulsively, she’d undone them, one by one, each careful braid untwisting into a frizzy poof of caramelized curls.

Kendra was having trouble concentrating on Michael’s surreal barrage of words. She held tight to the phone in her hand, bearing Isabel’s name, and looked to the ground. A picture lay where it had landed. The very first trip with the vacation club. Kendra longed to pick it up. A little raven-haired girl farthest to the left was smiling at her. She’d looked at Mina’s face at least a hundred times that day. Suddenly, Michael’s last words registered.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she spit out.

Michael stopped, surprised. He ran his fingers through his sandy-blond hair, like he did when he was about to reprimand an office assistant at his firm. “I’m not saying that you did, I’m just saying if you did—”

“But I didn’t. And if you think I would, then how well do you know me, Michael? Or vice versa.”

Michael rolled his eyes. He resumed pacing, nudging the framed photograph out of his path with his shoe.

Kendra watched him with widening eyes, and felt the black hole in her sternum swell, too. Kendra planned her days and future like most people would only plan Thanksgiving dinner. Down to the last detail, in full consideration of timing, with an obsessive flair for perfect presentation—that was the way of Kendra since childhood. If Michael could suddenly mistake her for the girl that tries to trap a man with—

“It’s a baby, Michael. Not a death sentence.”

This time Michael didn’t look up, the coward. “No, it’s not. It doesn’t have to be. A baby. Yet.” The yet was meant to be a loving concession. He looked at the picture of the four little girls. No, he needed to be firm on this. “I don’t want it to be. A baby.”

Now he looked at Kendra, really looked at her for the first time since the news, and felt some of the anger drain away. But as he took note of her disheveled hair and clothes, the soothing visage of his girlfriend became a stranger that filled him with fear.

“Do you? Do you want it to be, K?”

Kendra tried to think of how to answer. Of course she didn’t want it to be like this. This was horrible, not at all how it was supposed to be. This was the opposite of a Thanksgiving dinner of a life—her perfect boyfriend who would be her perfect husband, who would make partner while she made V.P. Their first child, a boy, wouldn’t be born until three years from now, leaving just enough time for a girl the following year, taking care of the children thing so she could return to work—

“Kendra?”

“I think you should leave.”

“Ken, come on, we have to talk about this if you’re leaving for freaking Honduras tomorrow.”

Kendra felt the vibrating phone in her hand like a low rolling of thunder. She picked up Isabel’s fourth call and put it to her ear.

“I’m not going to Honduras.”

November 2

Samantha

This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

It’s not freaking fair that life gets to muck around in our plans like this.

I sound like Kendra, don’t I?

But we were supposed to be friends for another fifty years. Friends that wrinkle and giggle and whine through the flagging days of youth into our eccentric golden years. I can’t grow old without you. That can’t be what’s meant to be.

Obviously today was not a good day, seeing you like that.

Sigh. Okay. Let’s move from the world is against us to us against the world.

For physicists, the Holy Grail is the Theory of Everything—a single mathematical theory in which the equations of the microscopic world agree with the macroscopic world we experience. A theory that would explain:

What is life? When does a soul/human being become or stop being itself? Roe v. Wade but even deeper.

Imagine a single theory that unites biology, philosophy and supernatural phenomenon.

I’m sitting here amongst a mountain of my old textbooks and new ones, so at least we know we’re not the first ones to have gone this route. I’ll keep you posted. But right now I’m freaking exhausted, and I still want to go to the hospital with you tomorrow, butt crack early, as promised.

xoxo

—Sam.

CHAPTER

6

THE NEXT DAY I WAS ROLLER-SKATING AGAIN, chastising myself for letting Isabel talk me into letting her take a cab. She was late and her cell phone went straight to voice mail.

And there are no addresses in Tegucigalpa. Not numerical, maplike directions anyway. Instructions to my apartment translated as “up the hill near the electronics store, past the police headquarters, before the gated neighborhood at the top.” Isabel could be dead. Car accidents in Honduras were like blue skies in California. Isabel was probably dead and it was my fault.

Argh. This was the thing—I was losing my grip on my identity. The old Samantha didn’t worry. She lived and breathed a world that was safe, exciting and ultimately fair. Now the two incarnations of me were at war.

A rap at the front door interrupted the battle. I stumbled out of my skates and made for the door.

A flash of dark hair and aquamarine eyes leaped into my arms. Isabel stepped back to look me over then wrapped me back up in another hug.

She put two slender, perfectly manicured hands on either side of my face. “Man, it’s good to see you!”

What do you get when you mix an American supermodel with a Panamanian heartthrob? Isabel Brighton was so stunningly beautiful, you never remembered how beautiful and always ended up speechless. And I’d known her for over twenty years. Fresh from a filthy cab ride, Isabel looked like she’d stepped out of a magazine ad. Her tan platform sandals and her crimson toenails matched her fedora. You would never know that this girl was the archangel for the world’s poor. Which was the only reason I’d let her take a cab by herself. Isabel was nobody’s fool.

She swatted me with her purse. “Lemme in, I’m beat. I need to sit—” Isabel looked around the empty living room. She burst out laughing. “You are hilarious. You are aware you have four adults coming to visit, right?” I loved how we weren’t considered adults most of the time. But then I frowned.

“I can’t believe Kendra’s not coming. You believe her about work? It doesn’t make sense. I mean, you got off work.”

Isabel frowned, too, but she didn’t respond. Instead, she beelined for the kitchen. “So whatcha got in the way of refreshments for a weary traveler?” She opened the fridge and took out two Port Royals, the local beer.

I looked at my phone. It was three o’clock. Isabel arched an eyebrow and shoved the beer further toward me. “I’ve got bad news.”

We sat in the chairs with our feet up on the railing. Isabel had her skinny second toe crossed over her big toe. It was no party trick. That’s the thing about being someone’s friend that long—you know all their ticks and their warning signs, usually better than they do. The toe thing meant her mind was off wrestling an alligator. Isabel hated to complain. She also hated to mope, belabor or reveal any amount of vulnerability. I knew it would take some careful best-friend maneuvering before she told me what was wrong.

“I got canned.”

Or maybe not. I studied her face for clues of what she wanted me to say. “And now you can take those tightrope-walking lessons we always talked about?”

She giggled. The one thing that always gave no-nonsense Isabel away—her schoolgirl giggle. She sighed. “I think you had it right all along. Live free in exotic locales watching the sunset, not chained to a desk, drowning in case studies of awful things happening to people who don’t deserve it.”

For the first time, I could see little lines under Isabel’s eyes.

“Ha. Hate to break it to ya, but I’m having a crisis in the exact opposite direction, wondering what the hell I’ve done with my life.”

Isabel turned to look at me, her turquoise irises narrowing. “Oh, jeez, don’t ruin this for me. I’m one inch away from moving here to work in an ice-cream store.”

I nudged her foot with my toes. “What happened?”

“Oh, you know, just that the economy is shit and obviously the first thing we should do is abandon the people that need the most help. Makes sense to cut back funding on the ones that will probably die anyway, right?”

Her compassion moved me. She wasn’t worried about herself. God, all I’d been worrying about lately was myself. I felt ashamed.

“So, then you got laid off, not fired?”

“Does it matter? I’m tired of trying to change things that are never going to change, Sam. Poverty, corruption, disease. For as long as there have been human beings, there has been evil.”

I’d never heard Isabel talk like that. She rubbed her temples and continued. “We all die alone anyway, don’t we? Why do anything except try to be happy—bum around the world and have fun.”

She wasn’t trying to insult me, but it cut deep anyway. She noticed.

“No, I’m being serious. It’s not only my job. Ever since Mina’s death I just don’t see the point of drudgery in the face of this—” She waved her hand across the balmy, admittedly beautiful skyline of Tegucigalpa. “But—”

But that would make you question every single thing about who you are, I thought.

“But then I wouldn’t know who I was anymore.”

I raised my beer. “Welcome to my world.”

Isabel looked at me long and hard. She clinked beers, but then lifted up my left hand. “Okay, lady. Talk to me about Remy.”

I looked at my finger where there would be a ring if I hadn’t buried it deep in my suitcase. “He’s getting me a better one anyway.” But I knew Isabel didn’t care about the carats. “Look, I panicked. If I’d said no, I wouldn’t have had any time to think about it.”

Isabel laughed, not exactly nicely. “You are one of a kind, my friend.”

I stuck out my tongue.

“So you don’t think maybe he panicked? Forty-three is getting old. And you’re a little American hottie. Time to lock it down? Make some babies?”

“Hey, thanks but watch it. Yes, he might have rushed a lit tle, in order to ask me before I left the continent. But he knows me well enough to let me travel freely. I think it’s sweet.”

“Or manipulative.” Isabel didn’t believe in marriage. She thought it was an outdated arrangement that led inevitably to female sacrifice, a lesson gleaned from her mother’s devotion to the single life. Jesse was the closest thing I had to a mom, but I’d somehow managed to hang on to a belief in love.

“You haven’t even met him.”

Isabel whipped toward me so fast her hair boomeranged around her face and back. “Exactly.”

No shy violets in our group. But she was right. I was in no real position to make this into a me against the world situation. I didn’t know what the hell I wanted yet. “He makes me feel safe. I’ve never had much of a family, wasn’t ever sure I wanted one of my own. But I do. And it might not be so bad to have someone to take care of me for a change.”

The look on Isabel’s face killed me. That wasn’t what I meant at all, but now I saw what really scared her. I backtracked. “Oh, come on, you know we’ll always have each other. But—”

Isabel looked like she might cry, except that Isabel never cried. She shook her head. “No, look, you’re right. We will always have each other, but it’s not the same as a boyfriend. Or a husband,” she added begrudgingly. “Anyway—what kind of friend would I be to talk you out of marrying a rich, famous French movie director?” Isabel winked.

CHAPTER

7

WE SPENT THE WHOLE REST OF THE DAY CHATTING and catching up. It felt marvelous to have her there. I completely forgot not to laugh, and the sound warmed the empty apartment like a day at the beach.

Later, while Isabel showered to go meet the others at the airport, I wandered onto the balcony with Mina’s journal. I didn’t have a specific question; I just missed her. This was exactly what I dreaded happening, that bonding with Isabel would fill me with guilt. It was one thing when after Mina’s death we sat around and talked about her nonstop, but it seemed so unforgivably unfair for our lives to go on and for us to be together and happy.

November 8

Mina

You came to visit me twice today. I can’t stand seeing you afraid. Sammy, you have the worst poker face I’ve ever seen. Forget what the doctors say, I know how I’m doing by the look on your face when you walk in my room. But I appreciate that you never lie to me. You don’t tell me that everything’s okay, like Kendra. You don’t sugarcoat.

So, when you get excited, I get excited because I know it’s genuine. Thanks for my quantum physics “crash course” this week. Nice use of diagrams, you nerd. LOL. I don’t pretend to understand it all, but it’s fascinating stuff. And let’s face it—otherwise, kiddo, we’re stuck with Rose Eynden’s “So You Want to Be a Medium.” Ha-ha.